Successful endurance outing for Teamwork in Dubai

Teamwork Motorsport had a fantastic start to its endurance racing career at the 24H Series Dubai 2019, finishing sixth in the Touring Car Endurance (TCE) classification on its debut, and most importantly completing the tough, 24-hour event.

Teamwork Motorsport was the best-placed of all the Hong Kong-based teams in the category in a fiercely competitive event.

The #100 Audi Sport RS 3 LMS completed 512 laps, over 2,700 kilometres of racing during the gruelling event. The race started at 3pm local time on Friday 11th January, with Sunny Wong starting the car and things were looking good, with Wong up two places from the team's qualifying position.

It was during Paul Poon's stint the first problems began to surface. The first issue was a sensor failure, which cost some laps to resolve, before the braking vents became loose over the circuit's bumps and also needed work.

During the night, poor vision and fighting fatigue was the enemy, but the team made it through to dawn, while at this point, half of the class had retired from the race.

With 17 laps to the next car, it was all about making the finish, and Macau Touring Car Cup 1.6T champion Paul Poon took the car across the finish to mark a great achievement in the team's 20-year history.

Paul Poon said:
"It the first time for Teamwork Motorsport to race so far away from home and for such a long distance and time, so it’s a great achievement just to finish a 24-hour race.

"Our car had some mechanical issues during the race but, all of the team members and drivers stayed really focused and tackled the problems one by one.

"It has been a valuable experience for myself and the team, and hopefully we can put all the knowledge we’ve learned to our use at our next endurance outing."

Sunny Wong said:
"Sharing the 5.4km circuit with 75 cars wasn’t easy, especially at night. It was an honour to race with my team-mates, they’ve all performed very well. Everyone was exhausted towards the end, but I could see their morale was high and no one was letting up on their duties. I am very proud of them."

Alex Fung said:
"Endurance racing is a totally different game. Our cars had problems in the early stages and we dropped to the very back, so that put us out of contention for overall honours. However, we didn’t give up, and eventually finished sixth in the TCE category. That’s the beauty of endurance racing. Congratulations to Teamwork Motorsport, and hats off to all participants."

Alex Hui said:
"Before the race we’ve made all the right calculations and predictions of what might happen and what needed to be to done. Then during the race, something we'd never thought of caught us out. So we didn’t lose, we gained a lot of knowledge and experience. This was our 24-hour debut, and I think we’ve done an amazing job, but next time we will be even better."

The team's attention now turns to this weekend, where its sprint race season kicks off, running a car in the brand new TCR Malaysia Touring Car Championship.